try not pissing your willpower away

if you struggle with impulse control, try not pissing your willpower away

Having to resist the urge to pee improves your overall impulse control1 - basically they had a bunch of students drink too much water, didn’t let them go potty, and then gave them the cash equivalent of the marshmallow test.

otoh, it also increases your risk of getting a UTI. So weigh your trade-offs appropriately, I guess

oh and while we’re indulging in potty talk, the Erfurt latrine disaster was… something:

“On 26 July 1184, in the German city of Erfurt, approximately sixty local nobles died when the floor of a building collapsed through the ground floor and into the latrine cesspit below. They were attending a Hoftag ("court day") conducted by King Henry VI when their combined weight caused the floor of the building to collapse. Some of the attendees drowned in human waste after falling into the cesspit.”

and if we’re gonna talk about butts interfering with breathing, let’s also talk about actual butt breathing!

so if your lungs aren’t doing the trick, maybe supplement with an oxygen enema! We all like supplements, right? it ain’t no peptides but it’s still pretty neat

Think froggy thoughts, my friends. (“a frog deprived of its lungs can maintain its body functions without them”2 - wikipedia)

could Tennyson’s Ulysses3 declaring “I am become a name” have been a bit of a reference to Names at Lloyd’s of London?

(Lloyd’s insurance policies used to be underwritten by individual people, referred to as Names, with unlimited liability!)

the timing works out

• Lloyd’s has been underwritten by Names for over 300 years

• Ulysses was written in 1833 (though not published until 1842)

there’s a shared tension between secrecy & pride

• now, recall that Odysseus arrives everywhere as a stranger, and hides his name again and again as he goes. Tennyson has him claim pride in being well-known at last, and yeah he’s reveled in each gloating reveal, but we know our twisty dude loves controlling the timing of his secrets along the way.

• And yeah, to become a Name at Lloyd’s was a matter of gambling and tax benefits, but it was also very much about status and prestige of membership in an old boy’s club, despite the devotion to public anonymity

and also risk

• The unlimited liability faced by Lloyd’s Names obvs (and in practice, when the asbestos claims in the late 1980s hit)

• and Tennyson’s Odysseus ofc knows that setting sail means risking his life (“It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, / And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.”) and prefers that gamble over the alternative (he thinks) of living death4 (“As tho' to breathe were life!”)

but I guess probably not?

a few more things that remind me of other things

• Pope Implores Priests to Stop Writing Sermons Using ChatGPT

  • reminded me of Single-Bit Error by Ken Liu (a short story about cosmic rays, memory errors, god, and love)

• For every known vertebrate species, two more may be hiding in plain sight

  • reminded me of One Train May Hide Another by Kenneth Koch (a poem I’m forever referencing for its one perfect metaphor)

short stories I recently read and enjoyed

• The Magician’s Apprentice by Tamsyn Muir (grooming and hunger)

  • “What do you do?”

    “Terrible things to God’s own creatures, for you,”

• The Waters of Lethe by Lillian Wang Selonick (bit of an old-school scifi feel, funny and morbid and hey gotcha)

  • which led me to her Imperial Flower Nails & Beauty (warning: sexual abuse, shooting targeting asian women)

• The Bear by Anton Chekhov (ok yeah this one’s a play, but it’s short and fun and an example of not-depressing classic Russian literature)

• The Suit by Can Themba (grotesque and heartbreaking)

• My Man Bovanne by Toni Cade Bambara (the fundamental sexy caring humanity of ourselves, even as we age and others try to reframe our story for us)

• Kaleidoscope by Ray Bradbury (tragedy, pettiness, and bearing grief by being put to use somehow, anyhow)

• 10 Visions of the Future; or, Self-Care for the End of Days by Samantha Milla (via) (too fucking real, and maybe too soon, but it’ll always be too soon now)

• …and frustratingly, a few I can’t seem to find online:

  • Pig and Lobsters, Death Parts, and From Here to There from Wanting Only To Be Heard by Jack Driscoll

  • The Behavior of the Hawkweeds from Ship Fever by Andrea Barrett

  • The Extra Mile from Hot Pink by Adam Levin

addenda

• re a sensible banker, and whinnying explained:

  • Dominus told me that Billy West said he wasn’t able to get Popeye’s voice right until he listened closely & realized that Jack Mercer was doing a low register and a high register simultaneously!